Mysqldump from MySQL 5.5 then restore to 5.1

Databases
1

I’m running vBulletin (forum software) on a Windows dedicated server. I recently had to upgrade the operating system to the latest version of Windows Server and in the process I also installed all the current versions of everything, including MySQL. (I restored the database from a mysqldump that was done before the upgrades).

Well now there are some small issues with vBulletin, and vBulletin kinda recommends downgrading MySQL (to make a long story short). So I’m going to use mysqldump to back up the current database, then I will simply uninstall MySQL 5.5 and then install 5.1, and restore the database from the dump file.

Is it safe to do that? I mean, is it safe to do the mysqldump from a later version of MySQL (in this case 5.5) and then restore it to an earlier version (in this case 5.1)? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

2

you should be okay, since the data is dumped using CREATE TABLE and INSERT statements, and there is general backwards compatibility

why not set up a separate mysql instance for the 5.1 version and test it?